Heritage Clothing Artifacts from the Diffuse Borders between Antioquia and Chocó

Abstract

This article presents five clothing artifacts that, due to their history, geographic location, cultural heritage and knowledge transmission practices, destabilize the political division of a territory and therefore represent expressions of cultural identities for both Antioquia and Chocó. These artifacts constitute only a fragment of the 24 artifacts characterized in the project Clothings, Heritage and Community, inventory of traditional clothing products of Antioquia, and exemplify the finding “diffuse borders of heritage.” The characterization of these artifacts responds to a proposal formulated by the researchers which refers to diverse inventory experiences and interrogates the clothing artifacts from different categories such as biography (acquisition, use, disuse), crafts, elaboration techniques and tools, relationship with the wearer’s body, dimensions as artifacts (aesthetic-communicative, functional-operating, techno-productive), the type of clothing artifact, the type of craftsmanship, and the heritage characteristics. The inventoried artifacts show that the cultural heritage of a region is not limited to administrative boundaries and reflect culture as diverse, transitory, and mobile, with borders that are sometimes diluted or blurred.